Distributed control system: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:32, 9 September 2023

Revision as of 13:25, 16 September 2023

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===Evolution of process control operations===

Process control of large industrial plants has evolved through many stages. Initially, control would be from panels local to the process plant. However this required a large manpoweramount resourceof human oversight to attend to these dispersed panels, and there was no overall view of the process. The next logical development was the transmission of all plant measurements to a permanently-mannedstaffed central control room. Effectively this was the centralisation of all the localised panels, with the advantages of lower manning levels and easier overview of the process. Often the controllers were behind the control room panels, and all automatic and manual control outputs were transmitted back to plant. However, whilst providing a central control focus, this arrangement was inflexible as each control loop had its own controller hardware, and continual operator movement within the control room was required to view different parts of the process.

With the coming of electronic processors and graphic displays it became possible to replace these discrete controllers with computer-based algorithms, hosted on a network of input/output racks with their own control processors. These could be distributed around plant, and communicate with the graphic display in the control room or rooms. The distributed control system was born.